Throughout the history of the mail delivery, there has been a gradual evolution whereby the postal service encourages mailers to prepare their mail in such a way as to reduce the effort required on the part of the postal service for processing such mail. As an inducement to the mailer to prepare the mail in such a way so as to bring about faster mail delivery, the postal service offers a postage discount to mailers for such items as presorted mail and printing of nine digit zip codes. Discounts are also given when the mail is produced in a manner that allows automatic processing with machines such as optical character recognition (OCR) sorters and bar code readers and sorters.
Even with present mail processing techniques that have come into being as a result of reduced postage rates for presorted mail, zip code mail and the like, the postal service is still experiencing difficulties in meeting targeted delivery times for the mail. The primary reason for such difficulties is the increase in volume of mail that has taken place over the decades.
Systems and methods have been conceived and described wherein the efforts required by the postal service to process mail has been reduced. One of the problems the postal service faced previously was that a significant amount of mail presented to the postal service did not have the required postage or did not meet the requirements of postal regulations. A scheme for overcoming this problem was disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,329,102 issued Jul. 12, 1994. In that patent application, a scheme is disclosed whereby mail is processed in such a manner that the mail is sorted to separate the local mail from the non local mail, the non local mail is placed into trays in accordance with their zip codes and a label is printed that identifies the mail in the tray for subsequent processing. As a part of this scheme, the postal service is given a running account of the mail being processed so that postage can be accurately determined and the post office is able to process the mail further without having to inspect the same to assure proper payment.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 641,985, supra, discloses a system whereby labels can be printed by a mailer for the trays and the sacks into which mail is placed for a common carrier, particularly an air carrier. U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,620 discloses a system and method whereby mail that is not addressed locally is conveyed by a mailer to a common carrier. In so doing, the mailer communicates to the local post office information relative to the mail with regard to the number of trays of mail, their weight, their destination and information that may allow the mailer to receive a postal discount for the mail. Upon receipt of the information, the post office would then determine the cost of air freight for the mail which is looked upon by the common carrier as bulk freight.
Although the concepts described in these patent applications and patent addressed areas where activities on the part of the mailer would benefit the postal service, there are still many areas where the efficiency of mail production can be increased.
In the prior production of mail, non local mail produced by a mailer so as to obtain postal discounts was still sent to the local post office. This procedure was addressed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,620 issued Jun. 1, 1993. Although such a system functioned well, there was no correlation between the destination of the mail being processed and the time of flight for such destination. This was addressed by the concept disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/900,397 supra. In that patent application, a just-in-time scheme is disclosed whereby a mailer produces mail in such a way that mail which is not addressed locally is conveyed to a common carrier in sufficient time to be placed on the next transportation vehicle without spending unnecessary time waiting to be loaded onto such transportation vehicle. This just-in-time scheme was accomplished by comparing the sequence in which mail runs were to be produced with the transportation schedule of the common carrier and correlating the production times of the mail runs with such transportation schedule. Although use of the just-in-time scheme resulted in enhanced mail production scheduling, there was a need still for monitoring of the scheduled mail production and the time of arrival of the mail at the common carrier to assure that the mail production schedule correlated to the common carrier's dispatch schedule to assure that the just-in-time scheduling was accurate.